Phantom Sage
by skywalker05
Summary: “When, and why,” the Sith asked softly, “did you decide that I wasn’t going to kill you, Kenobi?” During the Clone Wars, Anakin and Obi-Wan travel to a planet thought to be uninhabited and find a foe thought to be dead. Slightly AU twoshot.
1. Part 1

Morlok was a peaceful world. It was small, comparable to the fourth moon of Yavin, and alone in its orbit around a single, yellow sun. Covered with jungle, it boasted a varied ecosystem of small life forms.

A man sat in a cabin on this world. Nestled in his voluminous cloak, he touched a faded, patterned hand to his chin. Light eking in through the cracks in the hovel's ceiling showed black stubble on his cheeks and jaw. He set his hand to his left side, and closed his eyes.

A splash in the Force, like a familiar scent that brings back memories of an entire day, sent his eyes flashing open.

**Jedi Master Obi-Wan **Kenobi stepped out onto the ramp of the small ship as soon as the door swept aside. With relief he breathed in the fresh air, verdant with the smell of rich dirt. Animals sang four-note alarms from within the green jungle, complaining of the ship's descent and tail of smoke.

The Jedi Master hopped down off the ramp onto the grassy ground, leaving twenty-two-year old Anakin Skywalker standing in the relative shadow at the top of the ramp. Then the serious-faced Knight stomped down the ramp after him.

"What are you complaining about?" Obi-Wan asked dryly. "This is the one planet in the galaxy we're not likely to get shot on."

"I know, Master." Anakin replied, inflectionless. "But that's exactly why I feel we shouldn't be here. Scouting for resources? We could be out fighting combat droids right now; doing actual good."

"We need our rest, my very young apprentice. On the flight here—oh that's right, you were _sleeping _through it."

"I always woke up for maintenance checks—"

"What are they, three days apart?" Obi-Wan chuckled. "We're exhausted from the war. And resources are very important. The Republic has a clone army ready-made, but needs metal to build them ships to use. If we find that, we'll be doing equal good of a different sort."

Anakin grumbled, and set his hand on his lightsaber hilt as he passed Obi-Wan and took a few steps in to the jungle. Obi-Wan doubted that Anakin sensed anything worth going on the defensive about. Rather, what had him upset was the peace. Morlok seemed utterly untouched by the war raging across inhabited planets. It begged a question: how could this place be so peaceful, when other grounds were torn and bloodstained? Did only a twist of fate decide which life forms—sentient or nonsentient—would be spared or slain?

"We are _Jedi_, Anakin. We are not supposed to be as used to war as war is making us." _But you do not know that. You have been raised in a Temple overshadowed by violence. Ah, fate, do you build toward a resolution?_

Anakin's attention had wondered. Obi-Wan remote-locked their ship and followed the Knight into the woods.

For fifteen minutes they trekked. Obi-Wan waved a device the size of a commlink around in the air, testing for metal underfoot. Trees, underbrush, and vines filled his vision with a spectrum of green. The Force flowed silently, serenely, around the two Jedi. Even the food chain of Morlok, as far as Obi-Wan could sense, operated in smooth balance. Prey creatures accepted their role, and sacrificed themselves to predators to regulate the populations.

Once, Anakin's brown-clad back stopped moving forward. Obi-Wan pushed through low, leafy bushes to stand beside the younger man and look out over a vista. The sound of thunder engulfed the plain in front of them as four-legged creatures stampeded across the flat land, their furred ears high, sleek legs pounding. From the high ground, the Jedi could watch the tan-furred bodies wheel like a flock of birds.

"They're frightened," Obi-Wan observed.

"Only of us." Anakin too, Obi-Wan noticed, sensed the unusual breaking of the area's peace.

Through the jungle they walked onward, following a ridgeline gained by the path of least resistance. _It is possible to move through the jungle here_, Obi-Wan noted, _where elsewhere it is impassable tangles and flowers._ He looked back at the younger man for a moment. "It looks like this path was made. Created."

Anakin ducked a low-hanging branch and gave a disgusted expression to the implied maker. "It could be from animals."

"We have not seen any up this far." Obi-Wan returned his gaze to the path, scanning the foliage and ground for signs.

"That doesn't mean they never come here."

But Obi-Wan had found a track, a deep, treaded boot-print in the soft earth. "I think this does."

Anakin knelt and examined the track with a critical eye. "It's fresh. And humanoid, just like us. Like what the animals were scared of. I guess you're right, Master."

"Yes…that does, occasionally, occur." Obi-Wan mused, then switched to a serious tone. "What can you tell about it?"

Anakin's eyes narrowed. "I'd guess it's from a male, of average height. The spacing here…and he's got a false left eye."

"…Really?"

"No." Anakin grinned.

Obi-Wan huffed out a laugh and continued walking. The tracks continued for a few steps, fainter as they moved farther from the low, soft patch of dirt, finally leaving only the path itself as a sign of their passing.

The next sign that the planet was habituated by someone able to cloak their existence, and, more importantly, their presence in the Force, appeared as the Jedi came around a bend in the rudimentary path. Rocks had been piled up on the circle of cleared ground in front of them, flat stones from the river that they could hear rushing in the distance. Obi-Wan immediately linked a memory to the structures: Yoda made Jedi children build towers like this, out of stones as well as objects or the occasional droid or person unfortunate enough to be present, so that the apprentices would develop their ability to focus. This was simply a whole series of towers like those, of varying heights, made of the washed-round river rocks.

Anakin walked in among the towers, and touched one to sense the residual Force-signature of the architect. Obi-Wan could sense it too, partially through the conduit of his bond with his apprentice. A Force user had built these, someone powerful and neutral, or morally alone. Nuances of the presence reminded Obi-Wan of something he could not place; it was obscured by time, but linked to sadness.

"Does this feel familiar to you, Anakin?"

"No." Nonchalantly the Knight walked out from between the stones. Obi-Wan, wracking his brain for the memory, followed him into the verdant jungle.

**The path ended **at a tiny house beside the river. Grass was encroaching on the gravel it sat on, vines climbing down from willowy trees to embrace the slanted, wooden roof. The door was hinged and ajar. The wooden walls had cracks, knots, and bark on their drab, brown surfaces, and the one window, made of a single pane of transparisteel, showed on the opposite side of the small room it looked onto a shelf holding clean kitchenware. The glass and the shelving unit looked modern compared to the construction of the hut itself._ This_, thought Obi-Wan, _is the shelter of a shipwreck survivor. The panes and galley were salvaged. _

"Someone is here," Anakin said with enthusiasm, and hastened forward to enter the hut and rescue the person from their exile, or perhaps just barge in and attempt to be impressive.

"Wait," Obi-Wan ordered. "What do you sense here?"

"Nothing."

"It's the same _type_ of nothing we sensed at the pillars."

Anakin's face looked blank.

"Let's take a look around first."

He led the way around the hut. Nothing was there to be seen, except for the river and another window.

There was a person inside the hut, sitting in a wooden chair, shrouded by a black cloak. One of its hands was revealed, draped over the arm of the chair. The skin was odd; black stripes over red traced the lines of the bones.

Closer, the stranger's Force presence was not hidden. Obi-Wan could monitor his movements now if need be, but still could detect no personality, no moral alignment, and the figure remained perfectly still. _Surely_, Obi-Wan thought_, it can sense us from here. Maybe it wants us to be polite and use the front door. _

So they walked back to the front. Anakin was confused and antagonistic. "Be calm, Padawan," Obi-Wan consoled.

"This is too strange. To get no reaction at all from a Force-user we're spying on?"

"I think that's what he wants us so think."

The primitive door had no control pad, but rather a curved, lever-like handle. Hesitantly he knocked on the planks with his knuckles.

Nothing changed in the Force although he was carefully monitoring it; no new emotion, no awareness. The door swung fully open with a slight creaking, revealing a wooden-floored hallway with two closed rooms on the right side and one straight ahead. On the left was an open entryway, which Obi-Wan knew had to open onto the sparsely furnished living room where the mysterious man sat. The angle from which he watched now showed only the brown walls.

Anakin eased forward, hand on the hilt of his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan did not stop him. _He_ didn't have any better ideas.

Soft, deep laughter began when they were halfway down the hall. Obi-Wan stilled silent steps as a spike of fear speared through Anakin, then left him as quickly as a blasterbolt. When the laughter stopped, the Jedi peered around the corner of the woodwork.

The shrouded man sat unmoving in front of an empty fireplace as they approached him.

"We mean you no harm," Obi-Wan announced. "We are Jedi Knights, on a scouting mission for the Republic." Loyalty was not something one Force user could hide from another.

The stained-glass hands twitched, then lifted to lower the cowl. The face that looked at the two Jedi was strikingly familiar to Obi-Wan. Maybe the Battlemaster, Cin Drallig, had eyes like that—widened by utter intensity created by pain layered on experience on focus. Last time Obi-Wan had seen this man, the Jedi hadn't been old enough to placate fear. He'd been too caught up in the fight, too _trying to hold Qui-Gon's death inside himself in a little ball of poison wrapped in a Code-imposed peace, while the fleet-footed Sith danced away from Qui-Gon's life-leaking body. Lightsabers buzzed as they closed and battled again on the rim of the pit. The Sith—sun-orange eyes, striped face that Obi-Wan only recognized as belonging to a Zabrak much later—evaded two slashes that left him open for a quick stab. Obi-Wan sunk the blue lightsaber to the hilt in the Sith's chest and didn't bother to watch him fall as the Padawan sprinted back to his mentor…_


	2. Part 2

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," said the Sith sitting in the cabin. Years had not changed him much, except for the short hair lining his lean jaw. That his hands were marked just as his head was surprised Obi-Wan. The fact that the creature was still alive and not trying to kill them was a bit too overwhelming to be the _big _surprise of the moment.

But Obi-Wan had aged too. Even thought part of him wanted to lash out, he did not even project any antagonism into the Force. He could see Qui-Gon's death as destined and irrelevant now. _Anakin_, on the other hand—"Who is this, Master?" He said seriously, as if he suspected he knew.

"The Sith that I k…thought I killed on Naboo." Obi-Wan said aside, one eye on Anakin. "He killed Qui-Gon. You might not remember." His glance returned to the man in the chair. "The apprentice."

"I remember," Anakin growled. "Some. You…" Flash of anger—"tried to stop us."

_We weren't much of an 'us' then_, Obi-Wan thought, _but that doesn't matter much now._ He sorted one question out from the many which cluttered his thoughts. "How are you _here_?"

The Sith's voice had something of the quality of a whisper in it, white noise given a lilt by the crisp syllables of a Coruscanti accent. "You didn't _aim _very well. It's hard to kill my kind."

Obi-Wan did not bother to ask whether it was Zabraks or Sith that he meant. "But why are you here, on this planet?"

"I sought to return to my master, after what healing I could muster." Still the Force was as monotone as the voice—emotionless, revenge-less, making the Sith's presence almost unrecognizable even more than time did. "He did not want me back. I can only presume that I was not intended to survive that fight." Black eyelids closed for a moment, and Obi-Wan finally sensed anger, like a reopened wound, washed away again when the stare resumed. "You were to survive, Jedi. I was meant to crash land and die, if I was not bested by one as weak as you."

"We aren't far from Naboo," Anakin interjected.

Jarred, Obi-Wan resisted responding. It was clear that the Sith was without allies now. His lack of aggression was doubly innocuous and unsettling because of its apparent sincerity, which the Force adamantly attested to.

This man had killed Qui-Gon. He had presented himself to everyone on the Republic's side as a monster, voiceless, his only language lightsaber-crackles. Yes the Jedi could have attempted to reason with him, older, wiser Obi-Wan knew, but both sides would surely have considered it no more than a polite pretense of formality. Obi-Wan had killed—meant to kill, anyway—this man, had slain him like an animal, just as he had taken Qui-Gon away. The reason that this apprentice had been no longer acceptable to Darth Sidious was obvious, but his apparent shift in personality was not. Instead of beating rage, Obi-Wan now sensed calm, like the planet—the effect was subtly frightening.

Jedi Mastery offered him enough nonattachment that Obi-wan could wonder clinically what would be best to ask his Master's killer, while part of him seethed and the strangeness, the impossibility of this encounter.

"Next on the list for this interrogation," Anakin said half-wryly, arms folded across his chest. "What's your name?"

It was spoken slowly, but without the anger Obi-Wan figured he ought to stop expecting. "Darth Maul."

"Do you know what Darth Sidious is doing right now, Darth Maul?" Anakin snarled. "He's plotting to kill my _friends_. He's trying to kill the Republic. I've fought his pet Force-users, and—"

As Anakin gestured with a slashing, bladed hand, Obi-Wan interrupted his tirade. "Leave us for a moment, Padawan."

With an air of professional arrogance Anakin turned and walked out. Obi-Wan attempted to leech some of his confidence.

"When, and why," the Sith asked softly, "did you decide that I wasn't going to kill you?"

**Anakin stomped across **the gravely ground beside the river, toward the back of the novel so that he could no longer see Obi-Wan and the Sith talking inside. He knew exactly why he'd wanted to know the Zabrak's name: so that it would give him an identity.

It hadn't. He was still an archetype, wrath personified, a terror with its mask fused to its skin. Anakin had fuzzy memories of Naboo, but clearer ones of Illum.

While twelve-year old Anakin built his first lightsaber and did not realize he was doing so, he confronted his anger in the form of Darth Maul.

"_I am the master you secretly want," said the apparition, as real as the cold air all around. "The dark side can deliver what you most desire."_

And Anakin had banished the apparition, just as Obi-Wan had slain its flesh-and-bone counterpart.

Or so everyone had thought. The Sith apprentice—and the seeds of doubt—remained.

Anakin's memories of the blockade of Naboo were vague, but he vividly recalled that the goal of the Trade Federation, and the Sith, had been the capture of Padme.

The protectiveness he had not felt so strongly then flooded Anakin's mind like anger. _Enemy_, his animal self shouted. _I need to go back and _attack_—_

Anakin tried to rein his thoughts in. _If I storm back in there, it will prove me no better than him_

_Maybe I already am no better._

For the only anger in the Force was his own.

_No matter—Obi-Wan shouldn't have ordered me out. He's not always right. I'll just go back in. And not be angry._

_And not think about the fact that the Sith has to be hiding something._

Anakin did not trust redemption.

"**I tell you **this," Darth Maul said, "so that you do not make the mistake of sending other Jedi here."

"You know where Darth Sidious is." Obi-Wan suddenly realized.

Maul smiled widely, maliciously, for a moment. His Force prenense, still serene, did not match it. _He does not know_, Obi-Wan realized, _any other way to smile. _"_You _do not need to know."

"I believe I do."

The Sith stared, silent.

Obi-Wan attempted to look as authoritative as he could. "As a member of the Jedi Order, I am sworn to further our causes, and uphold our standards."

The Sith's expression relaxed into one of confusion.

"Do you not know the identity of Darth Sidious?" Obi-Wan continued.

"There are things I will tell you, and things I won't."

Anakin's footsteps interrupted Obi-Wan's attempt at saying something with the persuasion of the Force behind it. The Padawan tromped in.

And Obi-Wan looked back at Maul in surprise. Quietude diffused through the Force. The Sith, Obi-Wan realized, was restraining any anger that he could bring to bear to use against Anakin. He dampened down a near-compulsion (in fact, of a training near instinct) to attack, to take the advantage before the second Jedi came closer, restrained it with almost Jedi-like determination and discipline. He might as well have been thinking _there is no passion, there is serenity_.

_Where_, Obi-Wan thought fitfully, _did you come from, Darth Maul? Were you Sith for as long as I was Jedi? And if so, what is this change that has occurred now that I've met you again when I never thought I would? You are not of the Lost Twenty, so I think your childhood must have been very alien to me._

Anakin broke his questioning thoughts. "What's going on here?" He demanded.

"I was interrupted," Darth Maul hissed.

Obi-Wan waved a restraining hand back toward Anakin in a casual version of a clone's 'stay-put'. "I think it's all right."

"I'll explain." Some disdain showed in the Sith's voice, but it was effortless and without matching malice, as if his voice simply did not have the emotional range required to express anything else. "When you left me, I recovered and vowed to finish the task I had been set. The task of killing you, Obi-Wan Kenobi, since Naboo had left our grasp. But when I tried to contact my master, he said that I had succeeded in a task I had been supposed to fail. When my ship's hyperdrive failed and the autopilot stranded me on this planet as if it were murderous, my cries for aid from my master unheeded, I knew that I had not been meant to survive the battle. At first I thought that if the impact did not take my life my own lightsaber would—but the Force on this planet whispered."

_How malicious of this master_, Obi-Wan thought, _and mysterious. Master Qui-Gon's death was planned, and mine was not? _It was difficult to feel the residual pain he thought he should, as if the atmosphere of Morlok were an over-arching Code, and this inability both reassured and unsettled him. It was like a sourceless, unblockable mindtrick.

"I have no reason to go back to Sidious now." Maul continued. "He does not require me anymore. I sit here and think of the Force, instead."

It was with some amazement that Obi-Wan said, "You have no more desire to complete your mission, or to work for the Sith?"

Maul shrugged. "I was discarded by the Sith. The task set to me at Naboo? It is complete. My overarching mission? My _reason_? It is to kill Jedi." His slight smile asked Obi-Wan if he really wanted that mission completed.

"You're just going to stay here?" Obi-Wan asked.

Maul nodded.

There was some silence.

"Come on, Master." Anakin took Obi-Wan by the sleeve. "That's all we're going to get here."

"Sidious' identity is immensely important."

"Maybe," said Maul, "you were meant to kill me and never know who he is."

"Everything is the will of the Force. If we're here now, there's a reason," Obi-Wan retorted.

Maul resumed his silent stare.

"Maybe," said Anakin, his hand falling to his side, "We're here to learn that anyone can be redeemed, in a matter of speaking."

Maul did not contest or confirm the accuracy of the word 'redemption'.

"You just want to leave him here?" Obi-Wan whispered, turning his head to speak only to Anakin.

"He doesn't have a ship. He can't follow us."

Maul said, "I have no reason to."

Everything Obi-Wan sensed attested to the truth of that. Why was it so hard to accept peace from one who had raged, inaction from one who had been driven?

_Maul wants the Jedi to leave so that he can sit and contemplate this odd planet which is imbued with the light side like Sith tombs are with the dark, so that he can build rock towers and hunt plains-runners, so that he can age._

_Is that redemption? Is turning away from him now kindness, or failure?_

Obi-Wan said, "Let's go, Anakin." He turned and walked away.

The sun outside was touching the tops of the trees. Animals cried in the jungle, and Anakin and Obi-Wan stood outside the hovel.

"Admirable," said Obi-Wan as they walked away, trusting their backs to the hermit they had once known. "I was closer to losing my temper than you were."

"Is that sarcasm, Master?" Anakin smiled.

"No, I'm serious."

"It's this planet. It mellows us…and imprisons him. That's why I wanted to leave. He's trapped and we shouldn't release him."

Obi-Wan nodded. _Morlok a prison, but also a haven._ Would it help to mine this planet in the way of the Jedi, for education, to bring Padawans and let them feel this peace? Perhaps that would give them a false impression of the way the galaxy worked. Peace was not universal. Perhaps the only lesson to be found here was that redemption came in unexpected ways.

Fin.

_A/N: I never thought I could write redeemed!Maul, although it has been in the back of my mind as an impossible challenge. Then, during a SW D&D game, our GM described a creepy, quiet, tattooed old man sitting in a hut. It wasn't Darth Maul in-game, but my initial suspicions that it was gave me the most abiding plot bunny. The 100-word progenitor of this story can be found in chapter 54 of Silver Sky 1138's Collections. _


End file.
